This article offers a critique of the contemporary Contemplative Tradition’s view of spiritual transformation from the lens of the universally accepted letters of Paul. The article argues that contemporary contemplatives, especially Dallas Willard and Richard Foster, differ from Paul in three principle areas. Firstly, whereas Paul’s concept of transformation is based largely on objective realities, representatives of the Contemplative Tradition tend to focus on subjective realities. Secondly, contemporary contemplatives view transformation as coming as one imitates the life of Christ, his (...) daily disciplines and activities, whereas Paul’s view centres on the death of Christ as foundational to the Christian’s identity and thus vital to the way they live out their faith. Finally, the cornerstone of the contemporary Contemplative Tradition’s view of spiritual transformation is the belief that the essential means by which transformation takes place is engagement in the spiritual disciplines. It is argued that many of the activities that are denominated as ‘spiritual disciplines’ are not in fact ‘transformative’ activities, and thus do not fit the category of spiritual disciplines. Furthermore, this study insists that Paul seldom links the practice of the disciplines with the means of transformation, offering instead five examples of specific means of transformation that flow out of Paul’s accepted letters. (shrink)

Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 169-201, Spring 2022.

A tacit assumption since the 19th Century has been that the neocortex serves as the "seat of consciousness." An unexpected challenge to that assumption arose in 1949 with the discovery that high-frequency EEG activation associated with an alert state requires the intactness of the brainstem reticular formation. This discovery became the impetus for nearly three decades of research on what came to be known as the reticular activating system. By the 1970s, however, methodological and philosophical controversies led to general abandonment (...) of subcortical theories of attention and consciousness, with a return to an almost exclusive focus upon the cortex. With recent advances in the neurosciences the focus is shifting once more, this time to the unique contributions of cortical, thalmic, and brainstem structures in mediating selective attention and perceptual awareness. This paper offers a nontechnical review of the history of these developments up to contemporary interest in the putative role of oscillatory EEG patterns in the integration of perceptual features of experience. It puts forward the thesis that a key to understanding attention and consciousness is an appreciation of contributions of the thalmus to these cognitive processes. (shrink)

Over the past quarter century, organ donation after the circulatory determination of death (DCD) has grown in acceptance and prevalence throughout the world (Domínguez-Gil et al. 2021). Notwithstan...

The book demonstrates that speaking, feeling, reflecting, and identifying are interrelated processes and shows how desire or shame are attached to language.

In response to recent critics, this is a vigorous defence of realism. The roles of abstraction, abstract objects and a priori methods are explored, demonstrating the ways in which science mirrors the world.

While the various forms of violence have been the subject of special studies, we lack a paradigm that would allow us to understand the different forms of violence (physical, social, cultural, structural, and so on) as aspects of a unified phenomenon. In this article, I shall take violence as destructive of sense or meaning. The relation of violence to embodiment arises through the role that the body plays in our making sense of the world. My claim is that violence is (...) destructive of this role. It undoes the role of the bodily “I can” in making sense of our surrounding world - be this its physical, cultural, or socialsignificance. (shrink)

In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel closure principle of epistemic justification that has the virtues of its close cousin closure principles, without their vices. This closure principle of epistemic justification can be happily thought of as a multi-premise closure principle and it cannot be used in Cartesian skeptical arguments that employ a closure principle of epistemic justification. In this way, (...) then, it represents marked improvement over other contemporary closure principles of epistemic justification that require both sacrificing multi-premise closure and forcing anti-Cartesian skeptics who reject the closure principle employed in certain Cartesian skeptical arguments to cast aside justification closure. (shrink)

Explores the Pragmatists' contributions to American social thought, drawing upon the writings of William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James Hayden Tufts, and their various critics. This work also explores the Pragmatic analysis of society's potential for ongoing intelligent inquiry and cooperative evaluation to address social ills.

In a recent series of papers, Timothy Williamson argues that one can reach Edmund Gettier’s conclusion that the justified-true-belief (JTB) theory of knowledge is insufficient for knowledge by constructing Gettier cases in the framework of epistemic logic. In this paper, I argue, however, that Williamson’s Gettier cases in the framework of epistemic logic crucially turn on an assumption that the JTB theorist can plausibly and justifiably reject. In particular, I argue that it is rational for the JTB theorist to reject (...) Williamson’s preferred epistemic accessibility relation in favor of one for which Gettier cases in epistemic logic do not arise. Thus, I conclude that Williamson’s Gettier cases in epistemic logic do not genuinely threaten the tripartite theory of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a computational theory of thinking that does not eliminate the mind. In doing so, I will defend computationalism against the arguments of John Searle and James Fetzer, and briefly respond to other common criticisms.

This paper attempts to examine some of Rorty’s recent writings on religious beliefs. Two claims stand at the core of these texts: (1) that religious beliefs are “private projects” and (2) that those who maintain such beliefs are not intellectually responsible for them because of their essentially private character. Other commentators on Rorty have challenged one or the other of these claims by utilizing resources outside the pragmatic tradition. But since Rorty typically allies himself with this tradition, I try to (...) examine both claims by employing the writings of two classical pragmatists, i.e., William James and John Dewey. I argue that neither James nor Dewey would accept the claims that stand at the core of Rorty’s view with respect to religious beliefs. In effect, Rorty’s thinking on religious beliefs marks a significant departure from his pragmatic forebears, even though he employs them (especially Dewey) to bolster his own position. (shrink)

This paper assesses the effect of DNA barcoding—the use of informative genetic markers to identify and discriminate between species—on taxonomy. Throughout, we interpret this in terms of _varipraxis_, a concept we introduce to make sense of the treatment of biological variation by scientists and other practitioners. From its inception, DNA barcoding was criticised for being reductive, in attempting to replace multiple forms of taxonomic evidence with just one: DNA sequence variation in one or a few indicative genes. We show, though, (...) how DNA barcoding has not narrowed or reduced taxonomy in the way it was projected to. We examine the development and implementation of DNA barcoding across three kingdoms of life: animals, plants, and protists. Through this, we demonstrate that for DNA barcoding to work, the range of acceptable intra-specific variation needs to be demarcated from variation deemed to be characteristic of inter-specific differences. Consequently, biological processes responsible for particular patterns of variation need to be investigated and understood. This encourages an integrative disposition towards understanding and explaining the evolutionary processes affecting the rate and nature of change at the nucleotide level. We detail how the impact of DNA barcoding has manifested differently across the three kingdoms we examine, assessing this in terms of the ontological commitments that are held and instantiated in practice. Based on this evaluation, we consider the problem of studying multi-kingdom communities, and assess the consequences of our analysis for understanding classification and taxonomy. (shrink)

James and Stumpf first met in Prague in 1882. James soon started corresponding with a "colleague with whose persons and whose ideas alike I feel so warm a sympathy." With this, a lifelong epistolary friendship began. For 28 years until James's death in 1910, Stumpf became James's most important European correspondent. Besides psychological themes of great importance, such as the perception of space and of sound, the letters include commentary upon Stumpf's (Tonpsychologie) and James's main (...) books (The Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience), and many other works. The two friends also exchange views concerning other scholars, religious faith and metaphysical topics. The different perspectives of the American and the German (European) way of living, philosophizing and doing science are frequently under discussion. The letters also touch upon personal questions of historical interest. The book offers a critical edition and the English translation of hitherto unpublished primary sources. Historians of psychology and historians of philosophy will welcome the volume as a useful tool for their understanding of some crucial developments of the time. Scholars in the history of pragmatism and of phenomenology will also be interested in the volume. (shrink)

I defend economic and social rights as human rights, and as a feasible approach to addressing world poverty. I propose a modest conception of economic and social rights that includes rights to subsistence, basic health care and basic education. The second part of the paper defends these three rights. I begin by sketching a pluralistic justificatory framework that starts with abstract norms pertaining to life, leading a life, avoiding severely cruel treatment, and avoiding severe unfairness. I argue that economic and (...) social rights are not excessively burdensome on their addressees and that they are feasible worldwide in the appropriate sense. Severe poverty violates economic and social rights, and accordingly generates high-priority duties of many parties to work towards its elimination. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that those who embrace animal rights should also embrace primitivism—the view that humans should abandon modern technology and take up something like hunter-gatherer technology instead. I call my view “animal-rights primitivism” to distinguish it from human-centered arguments for primitivism. In particular, I employ a vital-needs framework to make my argument. I argue that hunter-gatherer technology is the least harmful kind of technology, it is sufficient to meet human vital needs, and it is possible for humans (...) to make the transition to hunter-gatherer technology while still meeting their vital needs. Alternatively, I argue that even if humans cannot make the transition while still meeting their vital needs, they are responsible for putting themselves in that situation and therefore forfeit the right to aggress against other sentient species to do so. (shrink)

On March 23rd, 2020, elite soccer academies in the UK closed in compliance with the government enforced lockdown intended to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. This forced parents, players, and coaches to reconsider how they interacted with, and supported, one another. The aims of the present study were to explore the perceptions of players, parents, and coaches regarding how they interacted and collaborated with one another during the COVID-19 pandemic to support wellbeing and performance, and; to identify opportunities to enhance workings (...) of those within the athletic triangle resulting from adaptions made following enforced lockdown. Using an interpretive description methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five coaches, six players, and six parents from an English elite academy soccer club. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings highlighted the importance of support and the different means of communication used between members of the athletic triangle to facilitate such support; the increased understanding of each member of the athletic triangle, leading to enhanced relationships, and; how members of the athletic triangle adapted practice to facilitate relationship development during the pandemic and beyond. The identification of these considerations has implications for coach and parent education initiatives to allow for optimal functioning of the athletic triangle as elite academy soccer clubs return from lockdown. These include the importance of continued communication between coach, athlete and parent; increasing understanding of each individual within the athletic triangle; and utilizing key interpersonal and technological skills learnt during the lockdown to further facilitate engagement within the athletic triangle. (shrink)

In a recent exchange in the pages of this journal, John Biro responds to Gabor Forrai’s argument against Biro’s argument that in most, if not all, Gettier cases the belief condition, contra popular opinion, isn’t satisfied. In this note, I’ll argue that Biro’s response to Forrai satisfactorily resolves the first of Forrai’s two central objections to Biro’s argument that the belief condition isn’t satisfied in most, if not all, Gettier cases. But Biro’s response leaves mostly unaddressed the most plausible way (...) of construing Forrai’s second objection. I’ll take up the mantle of successfully defending Biro’s argument from this more plausible construal of Forrai’s second objection. However, even though I’ll argue that Biro’s argument is in good shape with respect to Forrai’s objections, I’ll show that the definition of serious belief that Biro offers us is mistaken. (shrink)

Dewey is the most influential of American social thinkers, and his stock is now rising once more among professional philosophers. Yet there has heretofore been no adequate, readable survey of the full range of Dewey's thought. This gap is filled by "Understanding John Dewey".